A scorecard serves its purpose if it tells a story and informs advocacy.

As such, we prioritize votes that are contentious over those that are unanimous: unanimous votes neither tell a story nor inform advocacy. We prioritize bills and amendments that relate to our Progressive Platform and Legislative Agenda over those that do not, and we make a point of including bills and amendments for which our members lobbied their legislators.

Since legislators’ jobs are to vote, we count absences as the same as votes against the progressive position when calculating scores. HOWEVER, when legislators submit letters to the Clerk detailing how they would have voted had they been present, we will count these intentions, so long as their vote would not have alone decided the outcome of a bill or amendment. This helps us better achieve one of our main goals -- informing advocacy -- and acknowledges that there are extenuating circumstances behind some absences.

* What you see in our Scorecards and accompanying materials and anlaysis are the result of many, many hours of hard work by dedicated volunteers. Research, interviews, coding, data input, reviewing, designing, coordinating, investigating, editing and intensive consideration and deliberation. Our scorecards are unique and are having the impact we seek: giving voters access to obscure info that is necessary to keep legislators accountable.

Please support this work with your contribution. With more resources, we can make improvements on many fronts, including design and interactivity. You can also support our work by sharing it, with attribution to Progressive Mass: progressivemass.com/scorecard